The Wrong Birds

Maeril had come for onions.

For the length of one errand, she wanted the world to be smaller: a basket in hand, stew in mind, and a problem improved by heat, salt, and patience.

Toman’s workshop could remain behind her for a little while, along with its notes, frightened questions, and endless shaking hands.

Onions. Thyme. A piece of game. Something to make broth remember it had ambitions.

Mosstone’s market occupied a widened lane near the square, small enough to cross in a dozen steps. Three damp awnings stood beside two carts and a stack of cut planks. Baskets rested on folded cloths instead of proper tables.

Good. Small was manageable.

Maeril found the onions beneath the middle awning, hanging in braided strings. She tested one through its dry skin and placed it in her basket, then added another because stew required confidence.

Herbs turned slowly from a pole between two posts. Thyme first. Sage after. Something sharper if it smelled honest.

She paused over mushrooms arranged in careful rows by a woman with red hands and a scarf tied over her hair.

Beyond the awnings, Mosstone moved at the edge of Maeril’s attention. Wagon wheels complained in the ruts. A mule brayed while a man fought with its badly balanced load. From an open shed came the long, steady strokes of a carpenter’s plane.

Smoke dragged low from a cookfire, carrying barley, fat, and something browned enough to remind Maeril that her stomach had been patient far too long.

She breathed in.

For one blessed moment, the world became damp sage, cold air, and the possibility of stew.

A throat cleared.

The woman behind the mushrooms looked up. “Looking for something?”

Then her eyes reached Maeril’s face, and the easy market question paused.

The hesitation was different from when Maeril had first entered Mosstone.

Then, people had seen horns, green skin, outsider—perhaps witch, though forest towns took longer than cities to decide whether the word was accusation, profession, or weather.

Over the last tenday, Mosstone had added other meanings.

The witch trying to solve the weakness. The one who came with the quiet monk. The one they watched because she might know what to try next.

The woman glanced at Maeril’s basket, then back to her face.

“Still trying to solve the sickness?” she asked.

“Trying to.” Maeril turned a mushroom by its stem. “But this morning I am just preparing stew.”

The woman made a tired sound that almost became laughter, then lost it.

“My brother came to Toman’s yesterday.”

The smell of sage and stew fell away. Toman’s workshop opened behind Maeril’s eyes again.

“Tall man? Short hair, green eyes, left hand shaking?”

“That’s him.”

“Please tell him to keep eating. Small things, often. Warm, if he can manage it. The monk will visit if he has not already.”

The woman nodded and held still, as if the instruction had given her something small enough to carry.

“Thank you,” she said.

Maeril accepted the mushrooms and the gratitude with equal discomfort.

People now looked at her and Rishi as if help might have shape. Not certainty or salvation—only something to hold until the next breath, meal, or hour.

It mattered.

It also weighed.

Rishi had given his early mornings to the affected townsfolk instead of training. That morning, he had said, “I will check on the ones who had trouble breathing yesterday.”

Then he had looked at her.

She answered before he asked. “I am going to buy food before I start checking the onions for tremors.”

He nodded as though that were a reasonable boundary between sanity and collapse.

It was.

The last tenday had begun with Toman’s ribs, then his hands, then other hands: a brother, a mother, a wife with a child holding her sleeve. Each brought a different story with the same pale weakness inside it.

Toman’s workshop still tried to be a workshop. Sawdust covered the floor, tools hung from hooks, and timber waited to be shaped.

Then Maeril’s notes took the table.

Then the wall.

Fatigue before tremor. Shallow breath under fear. No clean fever, shared meal, simple household chain, or bite marks.

No answer that deserved the name.

She had left the notes in Toman’s workshop. They had followed her anyway.

Maeril tightened her hand around the basket and returned to the smaller world.

Onions. Thyme. Mushrooms. Stew.

Then a sparrow landed on the herb pole.

Nothing unusual at first. Sparrows belonged in markets—near grain, roof beams, baskets, and anywhere people dropped crumbs.

For half a breath, Maeril let it be only another hungry bird.

Then her mind returned from the stew.

The bird had landed wrong.

It ignored the seeds beneath the stall and made no effort to move away from her or the merchant. Instead, it faced the lane, its head snapping from one part of the market to another.

Not feeding. Not startled.

Watching.

Maeril stilled while the market continued around her. A farmer argued over egg prices. The mule stamped hard enough to rattle its harness. Someone laughed near the plank stack, then coughed into their sleeve.

The sparrow turned its head and tracked something across the supply lane.

Maeril followed its attention to a second bird beneath the eave of the low shed. A third sat on the handle of an empty cart.

None of them fed, flocked, or startled.

Scouting.

Placed.

Maeril’s fingers tightened around the basket.

“Oh,” she murmured. “I dislike that.”

The air behind her folded wrong.

No footstep or brush of cloth—only a sudden pressure at her back, like a held breath released.

Maeril turned.

A boy stood within arm’s reach.

He looked about twelve, narrow and mud-spattered, with a brown coat too large for his shoulders and a cap pulled low over damp, straw-colored hair. Mosstone had boys like him by the handful: muddy knees, scuffed boots, thin wrists, and the wary look of children who knew when adults were afraid.

Maeril had neither heard nor seen him approach.

His chest heaved. He dragged air too quickly and coughed into his sleeve, wet enough to turn her first thought toward the sickness.

Then she saw his hands.

No steady tremor. His fingers shook from running too hard on too little strength.

His eyes went past her shoulder and upward.

The sparrow beneath the eave snapped its head in the same direction.

The boy flinched.

Maeril’s thoughts narrowed.

Wrong breath. Wrong arrival. Wrong birds. Wrong fear.

He looked at her.

“Help me,” he whispered.

The market fell away.

He caught her sleeve with cold fingers. “Please. I’m being chased.”

The bird on the cart-handle lifted its wings and closed them without flying.

His grip tightened.

“She’s close.”

Maeril did not turn sharply. She widened her attention and moved only her eyes across planks, baskets, canvas, shoulders, and smoke.

Then Maeril found her.

Green hood. Dark leathers. Bow across her back. Blade low at her hip.

Memory supplied the rest: Toman falling in the town square, the white-streaked elder, and the younger elf half a step behind her.

Maeril recognized the leader’s younger sister.

The huntress carried the same awareness now—quiet, patient, dangerous because she did not need to hurry.

Her attention crossed the market. The birds did not surprise her. Neither did the shoulders turned too late, the gaps where bodies had shifted, or the crooked line of attention through the stalls.

She read the disturbance left in ordinary space.

The boy made a small sound.

Maeril felt the choice arrive before the explanation.

If she stepped aside, he would run. If he ran, the huntress would see him. If she caught him here, the market would become witness, and witness would become law before anyone asked whether law was mercy or only speed.

The boy loosened his grip, preparing to bolt.

Maeril caught his wrist.

“No,” she said.

Across the market, the huntress stopped near the plank stack and looked toward her.

Maeril’s stomach dropped with cold certainty.

The huntress might not have seen the boy clearly, but Maeril stood where the birds were watching. Beneath her cloak, her hand closed around a wrist hidden by her body.

The huntress’s gaze sharpened.

Maeril held it.

For one heartbeat, neither woman moved. Between them, Mosstone pretended it was still only a market.

The boy made another frightened sound.

Maeril set down the basket. Mushrooms settled, and the onions rolled softly against one another.

The huntress made her choice.

One hand snapped to the ground. Dirt between her fingers. A word beneath her breath. A quick touch to her thigh, almost hidden.

Maeril recognized the spell before it finished.

“Oh, no.”

The huntress lowered her weight. Her knees loosened, and her next step reached farther than it should have.

Longstrider had taken hold.

Maeril tightened her grip on the boy.

“Now.”

She pulled invisibility over them both. Her hand vanished first, followed by the wrist beneath it, the boy’s coat and cap, and finally her own sleeve folding into nothing around an unseen grip.

The market did not dim. Its noise did not change.

Only the space where they had stood became empty.

The boy sucked in a breath.

The huntress saw the absence.

Then the huntress ran.

Not wild. Not angry.

Fast.

She crossed the first gap before the nearest farmer finished turning his head.

Maeril pulled the boy sideways.

“Move.”

She drove them between a cart and a stall. Her shoulder clipped a man’s arm, and he shouted at the empty air where she should have been.

They were invisible.

They were not quiet.

Boots struck mud. Cloth snapped against wood. A dog barked at the empty space cutting past its nose.

The huntress followed.

“She’ll track us,” the boy gasped.

“I noticed.”

“Not the noise. The trail.”

Maeril dragged him around the plank stack. His shoulder struck wood, but he swallowed the sound.

They entered the service lane behind the market, between damp stone and rows of barrels. Their footprints marked the mud too clearly.

Bad.

The boy twisted his wrist in her grip—not away, but toward another path.

“This way.”

Maeril followed him left behind a low house.

Then the running stopped behind them.

Maeril hated that more than pursuit.

A chase had rhythm. Footsteps gave distance, breath gave effort, and mistakes made noise.

Silence meant the huntress was thinking.

Reading.

Maeril pulled the boy faster.

The lane split ahead. Behind them, boots struck mud again and took the same turn.

Too close.

Exhaustion caught the boy in the chest. He coughed hard enough to bend forward, and his hand slipped in Maeril’s grip.

She caught him again.

“Do not fall.”

“I am trying.”

“Try harder.”

They burst from the side path beside a cart of turnips.

The market opened ahead of them again.

Not away.

Back in.

The boy tugged toward the market noise.

Maeril resisted for half a breath, then understood.

Straight flight left a line. Empty ground held prints. Quiet streets gave every sound a place to point.

The market could ruin all of that.

They entered through the first gap. Maeril’s invisible shoulder caught a hanging cloth and snapped it against its post. A farmer swore. A crate shifted by itself, making a girl scream. The mule stamped and pulled its cart halfway across the lane.

Good.

Maeril drove them between two women carrying baskets. One basket spun, spilling mushrooms into the mud. A man bent to gather them and blocked the lane without knowing why.

The boy’s boots struck straw, mud, and a cart rut already crushed by several wheels.

The trail began to break.

The huntress entered behind them like an arrow through cloth, taking each opening before it closed.

Longstrider made her swift.

Training made her worse.

Maeril’s lungs burned. The boy ran in failing bursts, fear carrying what strength could not.

“There,” he gasped.

A fish barrel had tipped near the lane mouth. Water dragged scales, straw, and wheel grit across the mud. A cart had rolled through it, farmers had crossed behind, and a child was carving nonsense through the mess with a stick.

Beautiful.

They went through.

Cold water splashed Maeril’s skirt. The boy slipped. She hauled him upright hard enough to make him gasp.

“Sorry.”

“Later.”

They crossed the water, followed a cart rut into trampled straw, then stepped onto hard ground near the cookfire, where ash clung to their soles and blurred what remained.

The huntress stopped at the spilled fish water.

The boy’s fingers clenched around hers.

“She knows.”

“She suspects.”

“That is not better.”

“It is what we have.”

Maeril slowed without stopping and changed the shape of their flight.

The boy stumbled at the shift, then caught her pace.

No more breaking the market.

Broken things could be read.

Instead, she used what was already moving. She crossed behind a passing cart, brushed cloth already lifted away from splashing mud, and pulled the boy through low cookfire smoke slowly enough that it did not tear around them.

Across the disturbed ground, the huntress looked up.

For one terrible heartbeat, Maeril thought the smoke had betrayed them.

But the Suldusk remained beside the fish water, her gaze moving over water, straw, ruts, ash, people, and birds.

Too much.

Not enough.

Three ways out, with no proof which one they had taken.

Maeril held the boy behind a shed post. The huntress took one step toward them.

Then the mule dragged its cart sideways with a wooden scream. Men shouted, wheels jumped, and new tracks crossed the old ones.

The huntress stopped, jaw tight.

She had not been fooled.

She had been denied certainty.

Maeril moved, slowly at first, then faster once the shed wall concealed them. They slipped beyond the market and into the narrower lane leading toward Toman’s workshop.

The boy folded beside her, still invisible, coughing into empty air.

“No stopping yet,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“Good.”

After a pause, he said, “Thank you.”

Maeril looked back.

The market was already inventing explanations. The mule was being blamed. The fish seller was blaming everyone. The birds remained too still.

At the far edge, the huntress stood near the plank stack again.

Watching.

Maeril turned away.

“Thank me after I know whether I have done something wise.”

They took the workshop lane before the market remembered how to look for them.

They reached Toman’s workshop through the back lane.

Maeril avoided the main door and pulled the boy around the side. The latch caught.

Of course it did.

She put one invisible shoulder into the door and shoved until it gave with an ugly scrape.

Inside smelled of dust, sawdust, old resin, cold iron, and too many frightened bodies waiting in one room for answers.

Maeril pulled the boy inside, shut the door, and listened.

Market noise came muffled through the walls.

No running feet in the lane.

No arrow through the wood.

Yet.

She released the spell. Her sleeve returned first, then the hand around the boy’s wrist, then the boy himself, bent forward and coughing into his sleeve as if his lungs had become a private enemy.

Maeril kept hold of him—firmly, not cruelly.

He tried to pull free.

“No.”

He stopped.

Good.

Maeril’s own breath was less steady than she wanted. Fish water soaked her skirt, mud clung to the hem, and one knee ached where she had struck something she could not see, because invisible people were still, regrettably, people.

She turned the boy enough to see his face.

“What in the hells just happened?”

“I’m…” His mouth opened and closed. “I mean… it’s…”

Maeril waited.

Too long.

His eyes moved toward the shutter—not the latch or Maeril, but somewhere beyond the room. His breathing hitched high in his chest.

She understood too late.

She had asked too large a question of someone still trying not to come apart.

“Mm,” she said, quieter.

“I’m sorry.”

Maeril loosened her grip, not enough for him to bolt, but enough for him to feel the difference.

“Let’s try again. Smaller. What’s your name?”

The boy went still.

For one heartbeat, Maeril thought he was searching for the answer.

Then something in his face closed.

Not confusion.

Or not only confusion.

Maeril studied him properly.

“Okay. That is worrying.”

His throat moved.

“The huntress thinks I’m dangerous.”

“I am starting to understand her concern.”

“I’m sick.”

That softened something in Maeril before she could stop it.

“Yes. That part is clear.”

His hand shook beneath hers now, not with exhaustion from the run but with something colder.

“You help the others.”

Maeril’s eyes narrowed. “Others?”

“I mean… you help us. Right?”

“No. Try again.”

“The sick.”

“You said others.”

He fell silent.

“That was not a mistake, was it?”

The room seemed to shrink around his refusal.

“I saw what that woman can do,” Maeril said. “I saw her put a grown man on the ground with one blow.”

His fear deepened. His shoulders drew inward, and what little color remained left his face. He looked younger.

Maeril felt her mistake—not the warning, but its shape.

“All right,” she said before he could disappear completely into silence. “I will help you.”

His eyes returned to her.

“But you are going to stop feeding me half-answers before one of them gets someone killed.”

“I can’t.”

“You ran to me for help. I said yes. That is usually when people become more useful.”

“I can’t give you all of it.”

“Then give me the part that matters before the huntress reaches this door.”

His breath caught.

“Not yet.”

A sound came from the front of the workshop.

Both of them went still.

A familiar step crossed the boards outside, careful and even, carrying fatigue without letting it drag.

Maeril’s grip did not loosen.

Something in her chest did.

Rishi.

The latch lifted. The boy tried to pull away, but Maeril held him.

“Stay.”

Rishi entered without asking what had happened. His eyes moved once through the room: the scraped side door, mud across the floorboards, dirty water darkening Maeril’s skirt, her stiff left knee, and her hand around the boy’s wrist—firm enough to prevent flight, not hard enough to punish.

The boy’s breath came too fast.

A frightened child would have looked for exits.

This one listened for them.

His face angled toward the sound of Rishi’s entrance, but his eyes did not quite find him. His feet had already chosen their directions: one toward the side door, the other braced against Maeril’s hold.

Rishi looked at Maeril.

“Hm.”

“Right,” Maeril said.

The boy went still.

“You are not a Mosstone boy,” he said.

His mouth tightened, then his shoulders dropped.

“Then I should stop wasting the shape.”

The disguise changed without light or flourish.

His face thinned as if the lie had loosened beneath the skin. The roundness of human childhood withdrew into the narrower lines of a young elf’s face. Ears lengthened beneath the cap. Damp straw-colored hair darkened and fell loose in uneven strands.

Brown drained from his eyes until they were pale, open, and unfocused.

The coat still hung too large on her.

That made it worse.

A young elf stood where the boy had been, her free hand braced against Toman’s workbench and her breath shaking in her chest.

Maeril did not release her wrist.

Rishi did not move toward her.

The workshop held all three of them in sawdust, cold light, and silence.

“My name is Aestra,” she said. “Please do not give me back.”